“The dry season shortage [from January to June] will possibly ease from 2011 to 2012, when key power projects become operational,” said Pham Le Thanh, general director of the state-run Electricity of Vietnam (EVN). According to EVN, four of the north’s major electricity generation projects – Son Dong thermal power plant, Cam Pha thermal power plant 1, Haiphong thermal power plant 1 and the expanded Uong Bi thermal power plant 1 – will not come online this year.

The 200-megawatt Son Dong thermal power plant, being developed by the Vietnam National Coal and Mineral Resources Group (Vinacomin), was due to generate power by June, 2009 but has suffered delays. The plant in Bac Giang province is generating electricity on a trial basis. It will be some time before the plant can run at full capacity.

The 600MW Cam Pha thermal power plant in Quang Ninh province, which is now running on a trial basis, was also due to go online in June, 2009 but has been set back until May, 2010. “The shortage of workers and equipment have been among the key obstacles for those plants,” Thanh said.

Slow site clearance and resettlement, the bidding process and the neglect of investors, who are participating in many other power projects, have also contributed to the delays. The Haiphong thermal power plant will start generating electricity from March next year while the expanded Uong Bi plant has not yet determined its operation schedule because of machinery problems.

According to the EVN, the northern region would need a further 2.5 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of power in next year’s dry season. In the previous dry season, the north consumed about 20 billion kWh. “While the north’s new power sources are not on schedule, the system’s weak transmission capacity is another problem contributing to the shortage,” Thanh said.

Currently, up to 30 per cent of the power consumed in northern region has been supplied from power plants in the central and southern regions, as well as China. Most transformer stations and middle and low voltage transmission lines in the north have been running at their full capacity of about 3,600MW, 37.9 per cent lower than the transmission demand of 5,800MW, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT). In Hanoi alone, the total capacity of their 220kV transformer stations is about 1,500MW. In June 2009, the peak of the dry season, they had to transmit up to 1,670MW.

“The overloading will cause blackouts if there are no more new transmission stations or lines built soon,” said Nguyen Dinh Thang, deputy director of the Hanoi Industry and Trade Department’s Energy Management Unit. Figures from the EVN showed that a lot of transmission works in Hanoi and other northern provinces were running two to five years behind schedule.